Study Shows UNC Alumni Have Earned the Most Money in the NBA

Which college basketball program has produced the best NBA players? There are many ways to go about answering this question. Here’s one from the Wall Street Journal: “But what if you tried to measure the success of every college basketball team by another, more coldly practical measure: how much money its alumni have earned by playing the sport professionally? The Wall Street Journal collected the names of every college player who entered the NBA in or after 1985, the year the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams (now 68). For all the players on that list, we looked up their total NBA compensation and assigned those dollars to the college teams they played for. For the most part, The Journal’s ranking looked a lot like most lists that rank college basketball programs by wins. Marquee names like UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, Arizona, Michigan and Georgetown all cracked the top 10 with at least $496 million in aggregate earnings.”